He returned to the main bridge and saw that troops were nowmoving smoothly along alternative routes. The guns were being pulled back from the town centre. Ammunition wagons were joining the exodus.
It was now ten-thirty, the time when Wellington was expecting the Prussians to arrive at the battlefield.
Kit tried to estimate their new arrival time. Once they got onto a clear road they might march at two to three miles an hour, he thought. So he could tell Wellington that the main body might begin arriving at Mont St-Jean in about five hours, at three-thirty in the afternoon – if nothing else went wrong.
He set off to ride ahead and give Wellington the news.
43
WELLINGTON ORDERED ALL WOMENoff the battlefield. Some obeyed the order. Sal was among those who ignored it.
And now she was bored. She would never have imagined this could happen. She lay on the ground near the summit of the ridge, with Jarge and others of the 107th Foot, looking down over the landscape, waiting for the battle to begin. They were not supposed to be this far forward, but they were in a spot where a slight dip hid them from view.
She found herself impatiently wishing it would get going. What a fool I am, she thought.
Then, at half past eleven, it started.
As expected, the French first attacked the château and farm buildings of Hougoumont, the allied outpost that was half a mile from where she lay and dangerously close to the French front line.
She could make out a compound with houses, barns and a chapel, all surrounded by trees. A walled garden and an orchard were on the west, the right-hand side as Sal looked. On the far side, to the south, but still visible to Sal, a small wood – just a couple of acres – stood between the farmstead and the French front line. Sal had been told that Hougoumont was defended by two hundred British Guardsmen and a thousand Germans. The troops were stationed in the wood and the orchard as well as within the compound.
The French attack opened with a heavy cannonade from theartillery, which Sal thought must have been devastating at such short range.
Next, French infantrymen marched from their front line across an open field towards Hougoumont. Then the allied guns replied, firing shrapnel at the infantry.
The allies in the wood began to shoot at the French from behind the trees. The Germans had rifles, which had greater range and accuracy.
The shrapnel and the rifles were lethally efficient, and blue-coated French troops fell in their hundreds; but they held their line and kept coming.
‘They’re such an easy target,’ Sal said. ‘Why don’t they run forward, instead of walking?’
The question was not addressed to anyone in particular, but it was answered by a veteran of the war in Spain. ‘Discipline,’ he said. ‘In a minute they’ll stop and all fire together.’
I would run anyway, Sal thought.
*
Kit arrived back at Mont St-Jean soon after midday.
He found Wellington on horseback near the Guards, on the ridge above Hougoumont, watching the intense fighting at the farmstead.
Wellington saw him and said irately: ‘Where the devil are those Prussians? I expected them hours ago!’
Wellington’s anger could be vitriolic, and it was not always targeted at the right people.
Kit steeled his nerve to give his commander the bad news. ‘Sir, I confirm that most of the Prussians had left Wavre by ten-thirty, and I estimate they will get here not earlier than half past two this afternoon.’
‘Then what the blazes have they been doing? It’s been light since before five o’clock!’
Kit gave him an edited version. ‘Wavre is a bottleneck, with a narrow bridge over the river and winding little streets in the town – where, to make matters worse, there was a serious fire this morning. And once past the town, their road from there to here is waterlogged—’
‘Fire? How could that happen, after all the rain?’
It was a stupid question, and Kit said: ‘No information, sir.’
Wellington said: ‘Go and find Shiring. He’ll have a lot for you to do this afternoon.’
Kit rode away.
